Game on for latest enterprise

Monday

May 20, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Peter Cohan WALL & MAIN

Count me among those who are thrilled to learn that an online game studio is opening its doors in Worcester.

Alex Thornton-Clark and Ryan Casey, both of whom graduated recently from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a focus on computer science and computer gaming, are opening High Class Kitsch — the name that Mr. Ryan picked for the gaming studio that will make and sell the new game Pandora.

Pandora brings to virtual life a very imaginative story. Mr. Thornton-Clark, whose family lives in New Jersey but spent time in England, said in an interview last week, “Pandora is set in Victorian England. The central character is the wife of an explorer who travels around the world collecting artifacts and bringing them home. One day, her husband brings home Pandora’s Box. When she opens Pandora’s Box, she releases seven deadly sins into the house. In order to save her husband, she must solve a different problem to get each of the seven deadly sins back into Pandora’s Box.”

Rather than take a full-time job after graduation, Mr. Thornton-Clark and Mr. Casey decided to launch the company because they received enthusiastic feedback from potential customers at the PAX East gaming conference in March in Boston. Mr. Casey said, “At PAX East, thousands of people came up to us and talked about how much they loved the game. One 11-year-old made us laugh because he noticed that we used ‘shadows’ — a gaming technique. We also talked to a gaming expert with Volition who told us, ‘Pandora is the only good game here tonight.’ ”

How do you take a promising game and turn it into a business? Mr. Thornton-Clark and Mr. Casey are getting free office space through the summer in Worcester from the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute based at Becker College. After that, they concluded from their research that they can find space in Worcester that will cost them 40 percent less than they would pay for comparable space in Boston or Cambridge. They also like being close to the talent at WPI, Becker, Holy Cross and Clark.

As far as financing High Class Kitsch, the founders are “boot strapping” — meaning that they are not getting cash for the moment and are taking their compensation in the form of equity in the company. Before they launch Pandora next month, they need licenses to the different softwares that make Pandora work and for office operations. They estimate the licenses will cost $5,000. Rather than go to venture capitalists, friends, family or so-called “angel” investors, they intend to raise the money through Kickstarter.com, a crowd-funding platform.

Worcester is the right place for these WPI entrepreneurs.

“The WPI Technology Advisory Network will introduce us to investors and venture capital firms,” Mr. Casey said. “We expect to be able to hire extra talent — a sound engineer — from Worcester. It’s close enough to Boston and Cambridge, but I can also do outdoor activities at Purgatory Chasm and Mount Wachusett. And I enjoy what is happening culturally in the city at the DCU Center, and since I am a metal head, I like the Palladium.”

Mr. Casey also sounds to me like the kind of entrepreneur Worcester needs to succeed and attract others.

“I presented to the Worcester City Council the idea that I wanted to build a solid, independent gaming studio in Worcester. I want us to be an example so that others can follow our lead,” he said.